The second season of the China Dota 2 Professional League wrapped up after almost two months of competition, and PSG.LGD closed the tournament out with a big win over Invictus Gaming to retain their title.
After upsetting Vici Gaming early and sweeping Royal Never Give up, iG had some momentum heading into the grand finals out of the lower bracket. But LGD proved to be a dominant offensive force, winning three straight, sub 30-minute games to win it all.
LGD started the season on a rough note, struggling to make it into or out of the group stage of several tournaments before finding their stride and bouncing back to the top of Chinese Dota. Only RNG had a better record than them throughout the seven weeks of round-robin play and fy’s squad only dropped two games total during the playoffs.
Of course, the biggest story coming out of the CDPL season will end up being Newbee’s disqualification for match fixing, but that shouldn’t overshadow just how good LGD looked in the closing days.
No single player stood out for LGD. The team played with only winning in mind, leading to most of the players having very tame statlines despite dominating iG in the final three games. All three core players looked strong and had both net worth and damage totals that showed how well they outplayed their opponents.
The only player on LGD to have double-digit kills in a game was Somnus during his team’s largest victory in game three. In that match he went 10/0/8 for 25,500 hero damage, utterly dominating the mid lane as LGD closed out a 25-1 win in less than 25 minutes.
FlyFly was the standout performer on iG, opening up the series with a 15/1/6 game on Clinkz, but outside of that single showing, iG were rather silent as LGD routed them.
LGD are now back-to-back CDPL champions and currently look like the team to beat in China, performing well at ESL One Birmingham Online and preparing for a deep playoff run in yet another tournament.
